Bruce Springsteen's 'Working on a Dream' marks a grand reawakening

Bruce Springsteen's stirring new album freeze-frames its narrator right at the moment when hope rides in to save the day.

While pain and loss ruled before, and time will certainly bring more of them, the new CD captures a respite of joy in between. It's a scrappy declaration of uplift in the face of every known hardship.

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How well-timed is that?

"Working on a Dream" could double as Bruce's answer to last week's inaugural address, his own buck-up soundtrack honed for the new hard times.

In fact, the album's genesis dates from well before the current economic dive-bomb. Bruce penned these tunes nearly two years ago, during the fruitful writing sessions that produced 2007's "Magic" CD.

Luckily, the songs on "Working on a Dream" hardly sound like sloppy seconds. They extend the return to firm melodies and rousing hooks that made "Magic" a virtual comeback for the Boss.

After fans patiently waited through hootenanny Bruce ("The Seeger Sessions") preachy Bruce ("The Rising") and two hard shots of hair-shirt Bruce ("The Ghost of Tom Joad" and "Devils and Dust"), "Magic" brought back the hooks and the joy. It was his most embraceable album since 1984's "Born in the U.S.A."

"Dream" isn't quite as fast-paced as "Magic," but it's even more beautiful and it introduces a few sounds Springsteen has never explored.

The opening cut, "Outlaw Pete," pivots on sawing strings, creating a dustily theatrical setting that sounds like a musical answer to a John Ford Western. The lyrics also shake things up, presenting a satire on a classic folk "murder ballad," a tale of evil told with winking sense of exaggeration.

Otherwise, "Dream" veers blissfully in the direction of pop.

There's a Byrds-like jangle of psychedelic guitars complicating "What Love Can Do," a full Beach Boys-style airy chorale enlivening "This Life," and a bubblegum snap to "Surprise, Surprise" that almost could have been recorded by the Archies (a compliment).

Even the slower, acoustic songs, like "The Last Carnival" or "The Wrestler," avoid the dirge of "Devils and Dust," leavening their lyrical torment with melodies that sweeten with each listen.

Bruce can still lapse into Springsteenian cliche: "Queen of the Supermarket," about a crush at the checkout counter, reads like a satire of the Boss' working-class fetish.

But the song could barely be catchier, and even here the singer stays true to his long-established, resolutely American character.

The "Dream" he imagines in these songs remains intimately bound up in "work." To Bruce, hope is a field to tend and till. It doesn't come easy and there's no guarantee it will last. But in the life of his songs it thrives, providing a gung-ho spirit that couldn't be more ripe for the times.